United States in 1998

Area: 9,363,364 sq km (3,615,215 sq mi), including 204,446 sq km of inland water but excluding the 155,534 sq km of the Great Lakes that lie within U.S. boundaries

Population (1998 est.): 270,262,000

Capital: Washington, D.C.

Head of state and government: President Bill Clinton

In 1998 the United States experienced the best of times and the worst of times. On one level the national economy moved steadily forward through its eighth consecutive year of vigorous expansion, accompanied by remarkably low and declining inflation, interest rates, and unemployment. On an individual basis it was a great time to be an American, with the economy producing record real personal income, hundreds of thousands of new jobs, and lofty financial market prices for a prosperous and satisfied public. On another level, however, the national body politic was in turmoil. Years of investigations into various charges against Pres. Bill Clinton (see BIOGRAPHIES) coalesced during 1998 into a focused probe of his efforts to evade a sexual harassment lawsuit, which led to his impeachment at the year’s end by a partisan and divided U.S. House of Representatives. The disconnection between the sunny economic conditions and the stormy wrangling in the capital split the country into two camps, a larger one happy with their lot under Clinton and bored by Washington’s seeming obsession with scandal and a smaller group outraged by Clinton’s conduct and determined to see him removed.

The fragmented national mood confounded public opinion pollsters and helped produce an inconclusive national midterm election in November. With his personal popularity incongruously bolstered by the assaults on his character, President Clinton won almost every important battle with the Republican Congress when final tax and spending measures were enacted in October. The setbacks seemed to demoralize Republicans and energize the president’s core supporters. Although most commentators predicted that Republicans would add to their majorities among governors and in the U.S. House and Senate, the election produced no change in the Senate and a reduction in the slim Republican advantage in the House. That result in turn prompted another major surprise: Clinton’s chief Republican nemesis, controversial Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, resigned his post and thereby effectively became the first major victim of the Clinton scandal.

The Economy

Although Clinton’s problems captured more headlines, the most significant news of 1998 was the continuing awesome and enduring strength of the American economy, which loomed like a colossus over a troubled world. Two million new American jobs were created, many of them high-paying positions in technology, pharmaceuticals, finance, and health care. The national economy shook off a spate of bad external news and grew at a 3.5% rate for a third consecutive year, nearly double the rate at which economists begin to fear overheating. Yet inflation remained well below 2%, even while unemployment sank to a 29-year low of 4.5%, real incomes rose at near-historic rates, housing construction was booming, and consumer confidence reached a record high.

If the U.S. had merely been leading worldwide economic growth, its business performance would have been impressive enough. More remarkably, the muscular American economic engine surged forward even as trouble enveloped much of the world, refusing to slow significantly as other major economies faltered and stalled. When the year started, Japan was mired in a long-term economic malaise, and other vibrant Asia economies, especially Thailand, South Korea, Indonesia, and Malaysia, were still reeling from a 1997 currency crisis. By midyear the small but emerging Russian economy had begun to unravel as the ruble began to lose value, and rumours of trouble in Brazil and Argentina had reached Wall Street.

In July the U.S. stock market seemed to lose heart under the accumulated weight of world adversity and began a long, steady price drop, erasing in two short months a 20% gain posted early in the year. The Dow Jones industrial average fell from 9200 to 7400 by September, and a major New York hedge fund, Long Term Capital Management, heavily invested in Russia, was threatened with bankruptcy. Once again, as it had through much of the record American peacetime expansion, the U.S. Federal Reserve System rode to the rescue. Under Chairman Alan Greenspan’s supervision, a consortium of private lenders poured liquidity into the fund, effectively taking it over. Greenspan also orchestrated three small but rapid reductions in short-term interest rates over a seven-week period from September to November. The cuts in the federal funds rate--from 5.5% to 5.25% to 5% to 4.75%--helped Wall Street recover its footing and reverse the downturn. By year’s end the Dow had made its most spectacular comeback in history, eliminating the entire summer decline and again threatening record territory, even as the country’s political leadership seemed to be disintegrating.

The hearty American economic performance produced a political side benefit: elimination of the federal government’s chronic budget deficit. The red ink had hit a high of $290 billion in 1992, and administration economists had projected permanent $200 billion deficits as recently as 1996. The relentless surge of the national economy, however, reduced social expenditures (especially as the 1996 national welfare-reform law took full effect) and increased tax revenues far more rapidly than any economist could predict. When President Clinton and Congress agreed on a balanced-budget deal in August 1997, the 1998 deficit was estimated at $90 billion. By January 1998 the projected deficit had shrunk to $22 billion, but when the fiscal year ended in October, authorities announced a surplus of $70 billion and forecast future black ink as far as the eye could see.

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